Since I left vBulletin I have spoken to thousands of unhappy and happy customers about the potential of converting or upgrading their site to something better. I told them to just hold of wasting money on vBulletin 4 or IPB 3.1 and see if anything new would join the market.
After hints by Kier on twitter earlier this summer and a quick database search for a registered company address, we had some solid hints. My confidence has grown and with Mikey finding the XenForo group on Facebook (see blog entry about all this on xenfans.com) we felt it was confirmed: A new player will join the market.
Since the end of June we've been keeping a stalking eye on Mike and Kier and learned and confirmed quite some new information. And when the XenForo site opened I felt confident enough after DemoDay to inform those who were still asking to give XenForo.com a try. These were a few good friends who have always been in my eyes involved with forums and social networks, and through them more people learned about it.
Once it became properly public that this is going to be a commercial script that will go on sale at some point - hopefully further down the line this year - I have been holding back doing aggressive word of mouth, instead, I have kept it limited to those who asked about vB, IPB, phpBB, etc, and relayed them to test out XenForo with the msg "I think you will be as pleasantly surprised as I was when you see it".
All these people have talked to me in private on Skype, MSN, AIM, irc.xenfans.com, or via xenfans.com - And the shared consensus is: Not underwhelmed, actually overwhelmed, very promising, will certainly hold of upgrading to vB/IPB/etc.
On my wetalk network we've chosen to not "spam" xenforo yet via our newsletter to 20,000 users who receive it, (on wetalk we also run vbfans.com) but to inform them that I am building a new site called xenfans.com that's about xenforo. Those in the world of forums will get the hint and check things out, others will surely have skipped over the phrase.
I've done the same via my signature at vBulletin.com, my 37,500+ post count links to xenfans.com.
I feel I have played my part with an initial wave of word of mouth regarding XenForo, without overwhelming Kier/Mike much more than needed. The product is in alpha stage, for me that means that we're privileged here to see it, use it, test it, give feedback and find bugs. A great way as forum owners to learn it before it hits the market. Therefor I feel it's not needed to go full throttle advertising and promoting XenForo at this point, there's space for that in the future when there's a download and purchase option.
But I am confident I can click 60+
We at XenFans have worked hard during July to come up with plans about how to help promote XenForo when the time is right. Step 1 complete: Get our friends that follow us to become aware that there's a XenFans site, because of XenForo software.
